Text 283, 106 rader
Skriven 2004-08-02 13:04:01 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
    Kommentar till text 219 av Roy Witt (1:10/22)
Ärende: Fido on the move via cell phone.
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 > >> Easily defeated if they're using camaras to keep track of
 > >> license plates. Spray it with some cooking PAM and when the
 > >> camara lights up the plate, the light is difused and the
 > >> camara sees a big blur where your plate is.

 >  >> That works here with the 'red light camaras'...

 >  MvdV> Doesn't work here. The plates they use here are reflectors
 >  MvdV> themselves. So the cameras are tuned to compensate for that.

 > As are the plates we're issued here.

Not the same. The plates here are true reflectors in that they throw nearly all
of the light back in the direction it came from.

 > The reflector mixed with the cooking spray diffuses the camera's
 > light so that it's all a blur.

Have you actually tried that yourself or is it urban legend?

 > MvdV> It is amazing how good these camaras and the imiging
 > MvdV> software is. They don't just take a picture of the
 > MvdV> license plates, they make a picture of the entire
 > MvdV> back side of the car. And the resolution is
 > MvdV> good enough to read the bumper stickers. So there is
 > MvdV> usually enough detail to identify the car anyway if
 > MvdV> the plates can not be read.

 > :o) One reason why I never have bumper stickers on my cars.

Also don't forget to remove any recognizable objects from the rear window
sil...

 >  MvdV> And if you are ever caught for tempering with licence
 >  MvdV> plates, you would certainly wish you had been caught for
 >  MvdV> speeding...

 > Cooking spray can be washed off,

If you wash it off, it is not effective.

 > besides, that isn't tampering with license plates.

if it were effective, I am sure the cops here would see it different.

 > We're even allowed to repaint old plates, as long as the
 > color is similar to the original.

Not here. The plates aren't painted, it is a reflective foil. Painting spoils
the reflective properties.

It wasn't even allowed with the old plates, that did not have the reflective
foil. I was repremanded once for painting a plate that was damaged by gravel.

 > California cars can have plates that range from 1963 to
 > 2004 and span several different colors.

 > The 1963 to 1968 plates are black with 3 yellow letters and
 > 6 yellow numbers, 1969 to somewhere in the late 70s, they're blue
 > with 3 yellow numbers and 3 yellow letters. Around 1980, they changed to
 > White with 7 blue alpha/numbers.  Along about that same time,
 > personal, olympic and special plates with white backgrounds and several
 > differentletters/numbers in various colors were issued.
 > They also issued reflectorized plates.

Our standard plates are yellow with black lettring. Always three groups of two
letters/dgits separated by dashes. At the left there is a blue rectangle with
the stars of the European union and the letter NL in white.

Vehicles licensed before 1978 may still carry the old blue plates with white
lettering.

There are white plates for temporay use and for light trailers that do not have
a license of their own. Blue plates with black lettering for taxis and green
plates for temporary use by dealers.

You can find pictures of the plates at:

http://www.rdw.nl/cgi-bin/search/redir.pl?file=ned/02_diensten/ne d02_0005.htm

 > The Amateur callsign (N6AGT) plate on my old pick-up is
 > blue while the Amateur callsign (KB6PI) plate on my old
 > Firebird is white.

Our government does not offer that service. No vanity plates. :-(

 > I'm tossing the thought of getting Amateur (K6RXT) plates for my
 > Camaro, and they're a light sky blue in color, rather than the dark
 > 'royal' blue of the earlier plate.

I don't have that many callsigns. Just PA0MMV. ;-) Last year they made one
letter suffix calls available and I for one moment considered to go for PA0M.
But then, I already have this callsign for nearly forty years, so I decided to
stick with it. Someone else grabbed it.

Note: The PA0 prefix is for the old farts. They were issued before 1976. For
historical reasons they made it a closed group. On can choose a callsign in the
range PA1 - PI9 with one, two or three letter suffix, but only those licenced
before 1978 can choose a PA0 prefix. And of course there are only 26 one letter
callsigns with a PA0 prefix. There are a few left, but none that I want.


Cheers, Michiel

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